Thanks John and Devika, the business of killing and eating whale meat on an industrial scale began in the 1950s in Japan, where it was marketed under the pretext of it being the traditional healthy Japanese diet which it really wasn't apart from the fact of it being so consumed prior to that time in some fishing villages and their immediate surroundings. The Japanese equivalent to the 1960s traditional pub food industry which began with chicken in the basket or ploughman's lunches.

Devika, waste not want not - the rest of it goes to many places including the pet food industry - there was a big outcry about this a few years ago but I never heard that there was any great leap forward...

we must speak up for the whales because the people don't understand their language

Devika, you are right that we consume more than we need - consider for instance the amount of a basic item like bread that gets thrown at the end of the day into supermarket wast bins - so we end up paying for what is thrown away on a daily basis as well as what we buy ... it doesn't even make economic sense, not to mention the ethics of it all ... in Europe we are now growing food to make petrol (which in some countries must contain 10% bio-spirit i.e. food!). In Libya they are dropping cluster bombs on their own people - they bought the cluster bombs from Spain. Do you think that a large percentage of humans are mentally defective? What's the reason for our evil ways?

Pat, thanks for that reminder about Moby Dick. It's time I read that classic again.Did you know that hump-back whales in the S Pacific compose a new song for each year? I recently heard about a woman (in New Zealand I think it was) who had researched all this - but nobody seems to know why the whales do this - maybe its their way of keeping track of the passage of time, a kind of calendar perhaps?

Somebody explaining to us? -- I doubt Gwilym, and I am afraid truth is relative/subjective (the only absolute truth believers say is God)....and relative or absolute, and one has to find one's way to it - co-travellers, even friends or family, do not feel, or think, in the same way,

we have a saying in Malayalam...if you think about it, there's no end to it, if not, it ends there :)

but behind the seeming mindlessness could be the very ego that we confuse with mindfulness (Mindlessness as negative ego, mindfulness as positive) - and sometimes we have little control over it, either way,

well, if you give me a chance to speak, i'll speak -- but finally there could be no point still :)

Devika, According to an experiment involving the idea of free choice - the brain scan machine shows the tester what we the guinea pigs are going to do 6 seconds before we ourselves 'think' of it, - that is before we even have the 'thought', of doing it, of making the choice.May we take that a step further then and presume that some(thing) - a God if you like) knows what the guinea pig is going to do even BEFORE the brain scan machine knows? If that's the case then we may not be completely mindless but we may be simply bits of One Mind. I come as I always do (like your Malayaman saying) when I think about thinking etc. to Shakespeare's quote: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on".

Interesting Gwilym...Dreams yes, thats the stuff man a normal man is man of...but why do man think superior about himself is something i've never understood....

And this magician explaining the trick -- it reminds of a normal magician once explaining to me the trick that he plays to his audience on stage -- and i sincerely wished, i didn't ask about it :)

Now that reminds me of reading Einstein, to quote from my notes of his quotations and lectures, which you might have read as well, or may find interesting: as the origin seems the same concerns as we talk about here, Gwilym,

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

"I want to know God's thoughts...the rest are details."

Do we hope some entity in heaven or hell, whereever we reach explain to us -- well, as a child i used to think that way :)

Devika, thanks for the selection of Einstein quotes - I like the second one :) and I feel at one with some of the creatures but not all of them by any means - to the cat that comes by to share some time with me every 2 or 3 days I feel a connection, but unfortunately not to the ants who plague me every year or to the mosquitoes who drill for my blood and other pests - although they too have their place in the great scheme of things, even if it's mindlessly infecting millions of children with some deadly sickness.

Haha...like it, and true what you say of ants and mosquitoes - i have a sympathy for the former and latter would get my slap invariably...

we can't be Einstein or Tagore especially in the midst of work, --- Tagore used to carefully take out the ants that would get caught in his long beard i have read - ever since i read that my sympathy has grown, though....

though not an allround animal lover or enthusiast, it's okay...the world is theirs, we have built homes for ourselves :)